Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 68249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
“Don’t contact me. Don’t try to call me. This is over. Whatever this was, it’s over.” I left him standing as still as the Statue of David, pain curling through my core.
Chapter 23
Jax
I sat behind the chrome desk in my minimalistic office at our home base in Miami, and rifled through the legal documents Bane had placed on it this morning. This was one of the few times I’d actually been in this room.
Spare, empty of sentiment, with a good view. This was how I wanted life to be. Simple, aesthetically pleasing, sometimes funny—I had a set of prank items in the top drawer of the desk in case I felt like messing with Bane when I was here.
None of it made any fucking sense to me now.
I grumbled under my breath and turned the page. The words were simply ink markings. They were symbols that meant nothing to me right now.
Women never walked away from me. They begged me to stay. They threw themselves at me. They sometimes let me chase, but actually telling me to back off? Yeah, that never happened.
Everything about Riley was different from what I’d experienced in the past.
She wouldn’t let me protect her. She wanted to suffer through all of her shit like some type of martyr, and god knew, she probably still planned to have some other man’s spunk injected into her. Fuck, I couldn’t think about that.
I slammed my hands down on the desk, on either side of the contract, and the penholder on its corner rattled.
“Whoa.” Bane stood in the doorway, one hand on the knob. I hadn’t heard him enter, too lost in my irritation at what’d happened.
She didn’t want me near her? She didn’t want me to chase her? What the fuck was that?
“Dude?”
“What?” I snapped.
Bane entered the office and shut the door behind himself. He was the only one who had the nuts to do something like that when I was in a crappy mood. The others here buried their heads in their work.
He walked toward the desk and took a seat in the chair opposite me. “What’s up, Jax?” He asked. “You’ve been a bear with a sore ass for the past two days. What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I replied, stiffly.
“Come on, man, I know you better than that,” Bane said. “When you’re in a foul mood, it affects our business. Remember that. We can’t afford to relax. We’ve got to keep moving.”
That was Bane. He had to keep moving because staying still meant losing, and he didn’t do losing.
“I can control my temper,” I replied.
“No, you really can’t. So why don’t we cut the shit, and you lay it out for me. Every problem has a solution, and I’m betting whatever’s crawled up your ass and died is easily removed.”
“Colorful,” I said.
“I try.”
I shifted the contract to one side and interlaced my fingers, rested my hands on top of the desk. “It’s personal.”
“So?”
“So, I don’t discuss personal.”
“Like hell you don’t. Listen, I’ll bet that thing in your ass is something to do with the radiant Miss Riley. Correct?” Bane undid the buttons of his jacket and let it hang open, rested his forearms on his thighs in his problem-solving pose. “What happened?”
I told him bluntly. Didn’t go into detail, just the basic facts.
Bane took it in and nodded once after I’d finished. “You gotta call her,” he said.
“That’s what you got from all of that? I gotta call her? She told me not to fucking call her, and I’ll respect her damn wishes.” I rose from my desk and walked to the windows flanking it. I leaned my arm against it and looked down on Miami, on the sports cars and the activity. I worked my fingernails against the meat of my palm, then flicked them free. “I don’t chase after women, Bane. You know that. Not in this sense. There’s the chase, and then there’s being a fucking pussy.”
Bane snorted.
“What?”
“Nothing, nothing, just never thought I’d see the day when Jax King would show real fear.”
I spun so fast the teal office walls blurred. “What did you just say?”
“Oh ho, that’s caught your attention. Listen, you know you’re my brother, even if not by blood. I’m going to call you on your shit,” he said. “That’s just how we operate.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The fear thing, I mean.”
“Oh, come on,” he said. “You’ve never hesitated to close a deal or dominate, as you put it. Why now? Why pull back now?” Bane clicked his teeth twice, then inhaled through them. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” he replied. “Just, I’ve figured it out.”
“What?”
“Why you’re afraid.” Bane’s smirk made me want to slap it right off his face.
“Enough,” I said. “I’ve got work to do, and I’m not going to get distracted by personal shit.” Except that was exactly what’d happened. Man, Riley had crawled not up my ass but into my nerves. She pulled my mental strings like a goddamned puppet master.